Page 2 of Carnival of Crows

I absolutely hated the term influencer, but over five hundred thousand people followed me and my love for all things spooky. I wasn’t trying to sell anyone anything. I was just sharing what I loved. Somehow along the way, people started paying attention. A lot of attention. It helped that I lived in the oldest part of the country. There was always some place new, or old, to explore.

Graves Park was both. I remember coming here as a child with my parents. The last time, I was maybe ten or eleven. It was a company outing for my dad. There were face painters, balloon animal creators, and all the cotton candy you could eat paired with the rides and the fireworks by the lake at the end of the night. It was magic.

I looked past the gates. The old ticket booth still stood exactly where it always had. Fresh black paint covered the peeling wood. Jack-o’-lanterns glowed in the windows. Beyond them, the midway disappeared into rolling banks of fog.

Music drifted through the trees. Not loud. Not cheerful. Just the faint, distorted melody of a carousel that sounded like it had been playing for thirty years.

Something inside my chest tightened. Not exactly fear. Recognition.

Like the park remembered me…

CHAPTER 2

Damien

There was a reason the Ringmaster never smiled.

Smiling made people comfortable. Comfort wasn’t what they paid for.

I adjusted the cuffs of my crimson tailcoat as distorted calliope music drifted through the black-and-white striped tent. The melody had been slowed nearly in half. Every cheerful note had become something unsettling.

Perfect.

Outside, the midway buzzed with anticipation. It was Blackout Night. Only emergency lights. Only glow sticks. No flashlights. No phones. No mercy.

It was also one of the very few nights the actors could touch the guests. A special liability waiver was signed by over two thousand people for tonight. It was still absolutely mind blowing to me we’d pulled this off.

Granted, it certainly was no overnight success. First, we were borrowing from the nostalgia and the groundwork laid by our grandparents. There would be no haunt without the original Graves Park.

The first year we bribed friends with pizza and beer to spend weekends crawling through tunnels and hiding behind props. The second year we’d barely broken even. The third, horror influencers found us. The fourth, we sold out every weekend and finally saw a profit. This year, we had payroll. Actual employees.

We had eighty actors wandering the park on Friday and Saturday nights. Some of our friends stayed on, but now they were getting paid direct deposit - not in Papa Gino’s and Sam Adams Jack-Os.

Gran and Gramps would’ve laughed themselves sick. Their amusement park had become famous all over again. Just not for the reasons they’d ever imagined.

“Put your damn phone away, Dame. You keep looking at those numbers like they’re going to disappear.”

My cousin Cassie stepped beside me, adjusting the leather straps wrapped around one forearm.

As always, she looked every bit the Lion Tamer.

High black boots, crimson military jacket, gold braid, and a cracked leather whip that coiled at her hip.

“I can’t help it.” I chuckled. “It doesn’t feel real.”

“I know.” She bumped me with her shoulder and smiled. “But we did it, cuz. We really fucking did it.”

I looked across the VIP tent that we were standing in.

Fresh popcorn was being popped behind one counter. Another employee spun pink and black cotton candy into paper cones. Rows of caramel apples gleamed beneath warm lights. Glass bottles of old-fashioned soda rested in galvanized tubs packed with ice.

A miniature fortune teller’s wagon sat near the entrance, every stained-glass window glowing from within. It looked exactly like I’d imagined when I sketched it nine months ago.

“You did good, dude,” she said. “Make sure you take a sec to just look at all of this,” she motioned all around the tent, “and know we fucking did it.”

Cassie squeezed my arm before wandering toward the entrance.

“Careful, bro.” Luca appeared beside me, his face painted white, black diamonds framing each eye while a blood red grin stretched farther than any natural smile. This was Luca’s second year as The Fool. It fit him. The quick wit, the constant teasing, the way he could make people laugh one moment and then leave them deeply unsettled the next. Much like the rest of us, he started to embody his character. The Fool wasn’t someone Luca just played anymore. It was simply another version of someone he’d always been, a part of him he’d kept concealed… the haunt just made it easier to bring that side of you to life. “You look emotional.”